An Employee Of A Canadian Hydroelectric Company Has Been Accused Of Spying For Communist China

The Canadian national press reported on November 14 that a Hydro-Québec employee was charged with espionage for sending trade secrets to Communist China and arrested at his home in Candiac, Québec. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has initiated an investigation into Yuesheng Wang this August, after receiving a complaint from Hydro-Québec’s corporate security branch. Wang is accused of fraud for obtaining trade secrets, unauthorized use of a computer, breach of trust by a public official and obtaining trade secrets under the Security of Information Act (SIA) and the Criminal Code of Canada. This is the first charge with obtaining trade secrets laid under the SIA, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The RCMP alleged that the trade secrets obtained by Wang between February 2018 and October 2022 benefited Communist China, but undermined Canada’s economic interests, adding that Wang published academic papers and patents related to Communist China’s universities without the permission of Hydro-Québec.

According to information on LinkedIn, an American business and employment online service website, Wang, 35, has been working on battery materials at Hydro-Québec since October 2016. Previously, he a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Arkansas and a visiting researcher at Queen Mary University of London. He has a master’s degree in materials engineering from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ institute of physics. Hydro-Québec is a state-owned energy provider responsible for managing the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in Québec, as well as the export of electricity to parts of the northeastern United States.